TEST 1 - Review Sheet Flashcards
(37 cards)
Intersectionality:
Intersectionality is a concept often used in critical theories to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another.
Intergenerational mobility:
Intergenerational mobility refers to any change in the social position of family members that takes place from one generation to the next.
Epistemology:
The theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.
Milgram Experiment:
Milgram devised the experiment to answer the question “Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?” Volunteers were recruited for a lab experiment investigating “learning” (re: ethics: deception). Participants were 40 males, aged between 20 and 50, whose jobs ranged from unskilled to professional, from the New Haven area. They were paid $4.50 for just turning up. Milgram selected participants for his experiment by newspaper advertising for male participants to take part in a study of learning at Yale University. The procedure was that the participant was paired with another person and they drew lots to find out who would be the ‘learner’ and who would be the ‘teacher’. The draw was fixed so that the participant was always the teacher, and the learner was one of Milgram’s confederates (pretending to be a real participant). The teacher is told to administer an electric shock every time the learner makes a mistake, increasing the level of shock each time. There were 30 switches on the shock generator marked from 15 volts (slight shock) to 450 (danger – severe shock).65% (two-thirds) of participants (i.e. teachers) continued to the highest level of 450 volts. All the participants continued to 300 volts. Ordinary people are likely to follow orders given by an authority figure, even to the extent of killing an innocent human being. Obedience to authority is ingrained in us all from the way we are brought up. People tend to obey orders from other people if they recognize their authority as morally right and / or legally based. This response to legitimate authority is learned in a variety of situations, for example in the family, school and workplace.
Political Science:
like other social sciences—seeks to study human behavior through the use of a scientific method that, at times, can prompt objections and debate.
Random sample:
In statistical terms a random sample is a set of items that have been drawn from a population in such a way that each time an item was selected, every item in the population had an equal opportunity to appear in the sample.
The Scientific Method:
Hypothesis -> Operationalize -> Identify Independent and Dependent Variables -> Causation - Correlation -> Developing Theory -> Predictions
TheMargin of Error:
Themargin of erroris a statistic expressing the amount of random sampling error in a survey’s results. (=what is thechance the answers were wrong/not representative).
Normative issues:
Issues involving value judgments and ethics.
Traditionalists:
Tried to understand politics by examining laws, governmental offices, constitutions, and other official institutions associated with politics; they tried to describe how institutions operated by formal rules and publicly sanctioned procedures.
Behavioralism:
Merriam asserted the usefulness of looking at the actual behavior of politically involved individuals and groups, not only the formal/legal rules by which those individuals and groups were supposed to abide.
Postbehavioralism:
Is an alternative to both traditionalism and behavioralism. Postbehavioralists warned, political science would produce data that were scientifically reliable (empirically observed) but irrelevant.
Variables:
Scientists often refer to the phenomena linked together in a hypothesis as variables. In our example, age is one variable, and voting for a particular candidate
is a second variable. A variable is something that varies, changes, or manifests itself differently from one case to another.
A case study:
Is an investigation of a specific phenomenon or entity. A case study might examine a single country, law, governmental office, war, president, political decision, or, as illustrated in Box 2.3, a single family’s experience with poverty.
The Hawthorne Effect:
This effect appears when members of a test group modify their behavior because they know they are in an experiment. Subjects who know they are being observed may not act according to their usual behavioral mode.
Quasi-experiments:
Are also known as field experiments. Quasi-experiments are investigations in which the effect of a variable is studied by comparing different groups, even though the investigator knows that neither group completely meets the criteria of a control group, or in which an investigator studies a group before and after an occurrence to observe the effects of the occurrence, although the “before”group fails to fully meet the criteria of a control group.
The Rosenthal Effect:
Can also undermine an experiment’s integrity. This effect is produced when investigators unwittingly convey their expectations to the subjects in the experiment.
Volition:
Will or choice.
Force:
Is the exercise of power by physical means. Force can consist of physically obstructing access to an object, physical sabotage of resources, or war. It can be carried out in the form of embargoes and boycotts.
Persuasion:
Is a nonphysical type of power in which the agent using power makes its intentions and desires knowns to the agent over whom power is exercised. Persuasion is a major part of politics. Lobbying, speechmaking, debating, writing letters, issuing position papers, and making proclamations in the form of court decisions, executive orders, laws, and policies are examples of persuasion.
Manipulation:
Is the nonphysical use of power in which the agent exercising power over a second agent conceals the aims and intentions motivating the exercise of power. If you are persuaded, you feel it; if you are manipulated, you do not feel it because you do not know anything has happened.
Exchange:
Is a type of power involving incentives, in which one agent gives another agent an item in return for another item. One agent can obtain an objective or exercise power over another agent by giving the second agent the incentive to concur with the first agent’s will; if the second agent knows he or she will be rewarded, the second agent has an incentive to concur.
Sovereignty:
That is, the actual ability to make and enforce its own rules inside its own borders.
A state:
Is an organization that has a number of political functions and tasks, including providing law enforcement (military, police, courts etc). In enforcing its rules over the territory within its borders, a state may rely primarily on force (physical aggression against its own population), persuasion (the issuance of decrees or laws), manipulation (propaganda), or exchange (fostering a growing economy with a high standard of living in order to“buy”acquiescence from its citizens).
